‘That guy can cast what he wants. I just have to keep my distance to turn whatever spell he keeps at the ready a burden on his mind and a waste of mana. I’ve still a lot to do here so-‘ Lith’s seven eyes went wide as they perceived the elemental flow of the familiar spells turning into something unknown.
Ulma had finished conjuring the runes but instead of condensing them into their respective spells, he was manipulating them. Many runes from both Burial Grounds and Flame Cutter were discarded while the rest merged into Deadshot.
The air still had its speed and the fire packed its heat, but they were now compressed into a stone bullet infused with darkness. The new spell moved at near sonic speed, crossing the distance between Ulma and Lith in the blink of an eye.
Luckily for the Tiamat, the other six were still open.
‘I know this spell!’ Lith couldn’t dodge something moving so fast, he could only block it. ‘It’s the same one that killed Quylla, I mean, the meat puppet Jirni switched her with.
‘That’s the ability that earned Tiennon Zavra his title of Lost Magus, but he’s dead. I’m sure of it because I killed him.’
Lith activated the blue and orange crystals on Ragnarök to lessen the strain that channeling two elemental aspects of the Davross at the same time inflicted on the blade.
The water aspect split the mana from the world energy, weakening Deadshot the moment it neared Lith. The earth aspect turned the aura surrounding the blade into a sturdy defensive barrier harder than a diamond.
The bullet was the size of a baseball, focusing the combined power of the two tier five spells on a small surface. It gave Deadshot the kinetic energy of a truck shot by a sniper rifle.
Even with the conjured protections and his mass Lith slid back a few centimeters, his back recoiling from the impact.
‘Fuck me sideways, that guy is much closer than Zavra back then so I don’t have the time to dodge. Orion could block this kind of spell only because he wore a Royal Fortress armor comprised of hundreds of kilos of compressed Davross.’ Lith didn’t like his situation one bit.
His Demons of the Flames were still fighting the new wave of undead brought by the Nightwalker and Lith couldn’t wait for them to finish their battle. Not with Ulma weaving another spell from a safe distance while also feeding upon his thralls.
‘There’s no telling what kind of arrays and how many undead are hidden in the space between me and the Nightwalker yet I have no choice but to charge forward.’ Lith gritted his teeth in frustration
‘I bet that if I stall for time, he will alternate between attacking my Demons and me. He will chip my strength and the numbers of my allies while he keeps his own and more reinforcements come to his aid.’
Lith’s analysis was spot on.
Ulma had made no effort to hide his intentions in order to bait Lith into falling into the next layer of his trap.
‘If Verhen runs away, not only will his plan to raid the Undead Courts as he did with Thrud’s cities fail, but it will also prove that we can defeat him. The morale of the soldiers of the Kingdom will plummet and so will his reputation.
‘Our morale will be restored, instead, and the unrest between the members of the Dawn, Dusk, and Night Courts will die down. If Verhen tries to get me, he’ll die. His human form has no weak point but no powerful ability.
‘Either way, I win.’ The Nightwalker rearranged and fused two more tier five spells, conjuring Scatterblast.
The bullet this time was made of frozen rocks and infused with air and darkness. The air element propelled Scatterblast forward while also conjuring a small vortex that drew the dust and humidity in the air, adding more mass to the bullet.
As soon as it reached a certain size, Scatterblast split into two and the process continued during their flight. The vortex effect served to reduce the air resistance, increase the bullets’ speed, and collect raw materials.
On top of that, the high speed allowed Scatterblast to gather everything in its path, including the remnants of the spells conjured by Ulma’s fellow undead. Between the Wendigos’ frost aura and the debris from the fight, there was plenty to work with.
With each new bullet, the area of effect of the vortexes increased and with it the mass of collected materials. By the time Scatterblast reached the entrance to the third floor, there was a swarm of bullets aimed at both Lith and his Demons.
The ice conjured by water magic would smother the flames and keep Lith from turning into either a Dragon or a Tiamat. The darkness element the Scatterblasts were imbued with wasn’t enough to be lethal, but it would sap the strength of their targets even if the bullets were to be blocked.
‘Damn if I hate smart opponents.’ Lith gave Ulma a small nod of the head in respect and fell on his knee.
It reduced the area that the Spirit Barrier of the Voidwalker armor had to cover, making it thicker and denser. At the same time, Lith merged Ragnarök with the emerald construct so that the blade would weaken the incoming spells but suffer no damage from the bullets.
The blue and orange aura from the elemental aspects of the Davross coated the Spirit Barrier, tripling its defensive abilities. Once the Scatterblasts hit, the tide of the battle was still in favor of the undead but Lith had suffered no damage.
He cast a flight spell while also flapping his wings to cover the distance between himself and the Nightwalker in the shortest time possible. Ulma smiled and readied his troops.
At a wave of his hand, the surface of the marble corridor rippled like water.
Ghouls armed to the teeth jumped out the walls, ceiling, and floor, attacking Lith from every side. They had crawled there only after the beginning of the fight to avoid being detected by life-sensing arrays and then the enchanted stone had hidden them from Life Vision.
Lith smiled as well, activating a Spirit Blink and a Collapsed Space in quick succession.
The Blink moved him forward twenty meters (66′) while also bringing along the limbs and the parts of the weapons that had come close enough to his body to be caught in the dimensional spell.
Ghouls had greatly regenerative powers but even they needed to collect a severed limb before reattaching it. The Collapsed Space made the exit and entry point of the Blink explode but while Lith was moving at high speed the Ghouls were stuck in mid-air.
The detonation further destabilized the damaged weapons, making their pseudo cores go awry and causing a chain reaction. The wounds opened by the Blink were easily torn apart by the combined explosions of the equipment and Collapsed Space.
Several Ghouls died on the spot while the survivors found themselves unarmed. Lith, instead, avoided the explosions and used the blasts to fill his wings and fly faster.
